A midsummer night's drama

The proscenium was hemmed with 'Purple Wave' petunias. The "cheap seats" were down by the astilbes and European ginger. It was garden as theater at Christy Webber's East Village home for three delightful nights last month, when the stars were on stage and in the dazzling ceiling above.

Clients of Christy Webber Landscapes in Chicago probably wouldn't blink at her dramatic use of her garden. Nor would those who knew Webber when her life was filled with the sweet scent of motor oil and freshly cut grass.

Daring and a love of the outdoors were always hers.

"The performance in the garden was unique," says Maureen McCabe, Webber's friend and tenant, who directed the production of Christopher Durang's "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls." Scores of friends and neighbors attended the performances, raving about the acting and the novel theater setting. "It's a throwback to everyone's childhood in summer, but these were professional actors performing a wonderful comedy. When we finished, people asked us to do another one."

The stage was Webber's deck, built off the garage rather than the house.

"It feels like a little New Orleans summer garden," actress Jennifer Rule, Webber's longtime partner, says of her and Webber's English cottage-style garden on North Winchester Avenue. "You don't feel like you're in Chicago. You don't see any of the buildings around you and there's hardly any grass. It's small and intimate and [the deck] is like a nook or alcove," Rule adds. A nearby goldfish pond served as an aquarium in the play's "living room."

Webber's favorite residential clients are gardeners like her, those who love and use their gardens. "Those who truly care and fuss with their gardens, planting pots and taking time to do the special little touches, are completely successful," she says.

Years ago, the special little touches had more to do with Harleys than hostas.

Raised in rural Montrose outside Flint, Mich., Webber was glued to her father's side as they worked on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and, later, her own Honda Elsinor. "It was the hottest bike in the '70s. We were such a crazy bike family that I have more pictures of us around my dad's Harley than around the Christmas tree," says Webber.

As a teen, she collected trophies from Michigan Motocross and Powder Puff races, but when she broke her leg during an ice racing heat, an injury that required two surgeries, "that was the end of my racing career. We tried to Motocross again, but I just couldn't be fearless, which is what you need to win," Webber says.

As president of her namesake garden design and maintenance firm (www.christywebber.com), Webber has few fears as she competes for business in a male-dominated landscape industry. In 13 years, her business has grown from a one-woman, one-pickup truck operation to more than 100 employees, 35 vehicles, maintenance of 200 Chicago residential landscapes and more than 100 design and installation projects under way at any given time. The firm also plants and maintains numerous sites in Chicago for municipal and commercial clients, including the United Center, Millennium Park and O'Hare International and Midway Airports.

Webber's own garden was designed from the second floor as she rehabbed the 1898-era building. "I picked up a piece of drywall and sketched it out," she says. What she sketched was the transformation of a concrete slab covered in Astroturf to a space filled with peonies, hydrangeas and three columnar Norway maples that block the cement wall of the condo that recently sprouted next door. Beds are filled with layers of orphan plants, castoffs from various jobs because she can't "bear to throw anything out." Even the peonies came from an elderly neighbor whose home was being demolished.

She and Rule think of the garden as a country retreat.

"It's a little oasis. My biggest challenge is to sit on my deck and enjoy it because if I am out there, I just want to work," Webber says. Of her favorite plant, an oakleaf hydrangea, she says, "I just love the flower and, if it is a full moon, the white flowers are iridescent and could light up any dull corner."

Changing roles

Webber's love of the outdoors and sports led her to the University of Denver in Colorado, where she graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in physical education. It was during her sophomore year that she and two older students on her basketball team pooled their money, bought equipment and started a lawn-care business.

"We made a ton of money," Webber says. "When they graduated, I bought them out."

In 1986, a few years after her father died, Webber moved to Chicago to be closer to her mother and two siblings in Michigan. She taught high school physical education classes for one semester and hated it. "High school kids in 9th and 10th grades are something else. I'm a leader, not a manager," she says.